Lifeboat Foundation

Endemic to the mountain forests of New Guinea, the King of Saxony bird-of-paradise (Pteridophora alberti) is best-known for the flamboyant, mate-attracting efforts of its males. The bird’s courtship displays – which often double as a means of keeping competitors at a comfortable distance – make use of bright yellow breast feathers, wildly waving head plumes and peppy dance manoeuvres capped off with an exceptionally outsized, almost otherworldly bit of squawking. This video from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology provides a rare glimpse into the world of this idiosyncratic little bird, which has proven notoriously difficult to photograph in its rugged natural habitat.

Director: Tim Laman

Websites: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Birds of Paradise Project.

The art of matchmaking has traditionally been the province of grandmas and best friends, parents, and even—sometimes—complete strangers. Recently they’ve been replaced by swipes and algorithms in an effort to automate the search for love. But Kevin Teman wants to take things one step further.

The Denver-based founder of a startup called AIMM has built an app that matches prospective partners using just what they say to a British-accented AI. Users talk to the female-sounding software to complete a profile: pick out your dream home, declare whether you consider yourself a “cat person,” and describe how you would surprise a potential partner.

Continue reading “AI could be your wingman—er, wingbot—on your next first date” »

Three hundred and sixty-six days ago, CeCe Moore woke up to the headline that would change her world: “Suspected Golden State Killer, East Area Rapist Arrested After Eluding Authorities for Decades.” Later that day, those authorities would hold a press conference in front of the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office to explain how, a day earlier, they had finally put handcuffs on the man believed to have committed a series of sadistic rapes and murders that spread terror through California for more than 40 years. But Moore didn’t have to tune in to know how they had done it. “I knew immediately they had cracked it with genetic genealogy and GEDmatch,” she says.

She knew it because at the time, Moore was working as the genetic genealogy researcher on the PBS show Finding Your Roots and had a consulting business helping adoptees find their biological parents. To aid her searches, she regularly logged on to GEDmatch, a public database where hobbyists upload results from consumer genetic testing companies like 23andMe and Ancestry to find relatives with shared DNA and to reverse-engineer their family trees. It had come to her attention that another genealogist on the site, Barbara Rae-Venter, had been uploading files that seemed out of place, and Moore suspected they came not from family members, but from crime scenes. But she had never imagined that one of them belonged to the man believed to be one of the most notorious serial killers in US history. “This was going to be huge,” she remembers telling people that day.

Continue reading “What the Golden State Killer Tells Us About Forensic Genetics” »

😍 While living and working 250 miles above Earth, crew members aboard the International Space Station captured these mesmerizing images of the place we call home. Take a look at more images like this:

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The Dishwasher. The must-have kitchen appliance for the time-conscious and lazy home-occupiers alike. However, justifying the loss of valuable space and the increase in water-bill that comes with them is sometimes a little tricky… especially when you live in a place that is on the smaller side! This was the motive that led to the creation of Toasher, the portable dishwasher for limited living spaces.

Toasher utilizes a method of interaction that has been lifted from another kitchen appliance, the toaster. The dirty items are lowered into the stainless steel tank, where an ultrasonic transducer agitates the dirt and separates it from the dishes. Add-ons elevate Toasher’s functionality even further; with the modular peg-board that can be attached to the rear of the unit, to expanding the amount of storage that it can hold and allowing it to be used as an item of furniture as well as just a kitchen appliance!

Designer: Lin Shuo De

Via environment — world economic forum

Larger animals are at greater risk of extinction as relentless human pressure on their habitats takes its toll.

According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the quake occurred at 4:10 p.m. Jakarta time or 6:10 p.m. local time, 102 kilometers north-northeast of Laiwui in South Halmahera, at a depth of 10 kilometers.

Based on official information from the South Halmahera Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD), the quake was mostly felt in the regency for two to five seconds, prompting people to panic and rush out of their homes.

The BPBD is still assessing the aftermath of the quake.

The Orion Nebula is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion’s Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of 1,344 ± 20 light years and is the closest… This wide-field view of the Orion Nebula (Messier 42).

In one of the most detailed astronomical images ever produced, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is offering an unprecedented look at the Orion Nebula. This turbulent star-formation region is one of astronomy’s most dramatic and photogenic celestial objects.

Continue reading “Zooming on the Orion Nebula” »